Birmingham-Southern College's decision last week to lay off 29 faculty members has thrust the financially troubled private liberal-arts institution into an irony-tinged spotlight.
That's because a few days after announcing the cuts, which will take place over the next two academic years, Birmingham-Southern was recognized as a "Great College to Work For" in The Chronicle's third annual survey of the academic workplace. The Great Colleges survey is based on responses by some 43,000 employees at 275 colleges to questions about their institutions.
However, employees of Birmingham-Southern—and the other 96 colleges listed as top performers—completed the survey in March and April, a few months before Birmingham-Southern's financial crisis hit and austerity measures were made public.
Earlier this month the college announced major budget cuts to deal with financial problems that largely stemmed from incorrectly awarding millions of extra dollars in financial aid to students for several years. The college says it must cut its $49-million budget by $10-million.
In addition to laying off the professors, the college has dismissed 51 staff members, cut pay by 10 percent across the board, given employees two weeks of furlough, and stopped contributions to the employees' dental plan. Birmingham-Southern also plans to phase out five majors—accounting, computer science, dance, French, and German—in the 2011-12 academic year.
Comments
1. bjoiner - July 28, 2010 at 12:19 pm
fyi
2. 11134078 - July 28, 2010 at 02:51 pm
This confirms something I rather suspected about ratings based on what appears to be voluntary and totally non-binding consultation by administrations of their faculties. There is nothing to prevent these administrations from hiding vital information and their intentions for the near future from the faculty. There is nothing to make them leave matters that are entirely or largely the concern of the faculty entirely or largely to the faculty. These administrations may get good marks from a naive faculty, but when a crunch comes, they do as the please, with or without play-acting their way through a consultation script. The faculty turns out to be entirely out of it, and moreover, so silly as to have given their administration good marks for its willingness to consult them! Consultation is something that must be negotiated and the results of the negotiation must be binding on all parties. Otherwise it may prove illusory.